1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a control apparatus for executing an application program and a platform program. The present invention relates more particularly to a control apparatus, a control method and a computer program capable of working flexibly with various combinations of application programs and platform programs and improving the reusability of application programs and platform programs to shorten the development process and reduce the development burden.
2. Background Art
In recent years, there has been used in various fields a system in which a plurality of control apparatuses for implementing various controls are provided with communication functions, connected to each other, and assigned respective functions to mutually exchange data and perform a variety of processes in cooperation with each other. For example, in the field of vehicle-mounted LAN (Local Area Network) provided in vehicles, an ECU (Electronic Control Unit) has a communication function, and respective ECUs are controlled to perform specific processes and exchange data with each other to implement a variety of functions as a system (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2007-329578.
In the case where a plurality of control apparatuses perform a variety of processes in cooperation with each other, the respective control apparatuses may be configured to implement similar functions and substitute for each other to perform functions according to settings, instead of providing each control apparatus with a specific function. More specifically, common functions are separated from application programs, which enable the respective control apparatuses to perform specific functions, so that the common functions are implemented by a platform program. Examples of the common functions include storing and updating of data for use in executing the application programs, and a communication process with other apparatus.
Therefore, when the definitions of communication specifications have changed, the platform program is modified, and all the control apparatuses are arranged to execute the modified platform program. In this case, there is no need for the application programs to be compatible with the modified communication specifications, and communications with other control apparatuses are implemented by the same process performed until then. Thus, it is not necessary to perform complicated management, such as preparing various versions of application programs compatible with different hardware. Since it is just necessary to configure application programs to purely implement specific functions, the reusability of the programs is improved.